Piezoelectric pump with flexible venous valves for active cell transmission

Abstract

The development of organ-on-a-chip systems demands high requirements for adequate micro-pump performance, which needs excellent performance and effective transport of active cells. In this study, we designed a piezoelectric pump with a flexible venous valve inspired by that of humans. Performance test of the proposed pump with deionized water as the transmission medium shows a maximum output flow rate of 14.95 mL/min when the input voltage is 100 V, and the pump can transfer aqueous solutions of glycerol with a viscosity of 10.8 mPa·s. Cell survival rate can reach 97.22% with a yeast cell culture solution as the transmission medium. A computational model of the electric-solid-liquid multi-physical field coupling of the piezoelectric pump with a flexible venous valve is established, and simulation results are consistent with experimental results. The proposed pump can help to construct the circulating organ-on-a-chip system, and the simple structure and portable application can enrich the design of microfluidic systems. In addition, the multi-physical field coupling computational model established for the proposed piezoelectric pump can provide an in-depth study of the characteristics of the flow field, facilitating the optimal design of the micro-pump and providing a reference for the further study of active cell transport in organ-on-a-chip systems.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

venous valve / flexible venous valve / cell transmission / organ-on-a-chip system / piezoelectric device

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Author Contributions

Jun Huang: methodology, formal analysis, investigation, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition, writing, and review & editing; Jiaming Liu: formal analysis, validation, investigation, data curation, and writing; Kai Li: data curation, software, formal analysis, and writing; Lei Zhang: data curation, formal analysis, and visualization; Quan Zhang: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, review and editing, project administration, and funding acquisition; Yuan Wang: investigation, data curation, software, and formal analysis.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51605200 and 61973207), Shanghai Rising-Star Program, China (Grant No. 20QA1403900), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, China (Grant No. 19ZR1474000).

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